


in the evening, by the moonlight

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 08:30:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has been gone for eight months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the evening, by the moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> this is a mini-fic that was written for tumblr users sourwolfey and soulbind. it's been pretty well-received on tumblr, so i figured i'd go ahead and post it here, too. i have a LOT of mixed (read: 99% negative) feels about stiles ever becoming a werewolf, but i actually made my own heart hurt writing this SO I FIGURE THAT MUST BE A GOOD SIGN.

Eight months.

Stiles has been gone for eight months.

The first month was the hardest, because sometimes Scott would say something clever or do something he deemed  _awesome_ , and he’d automatically raise his fist to brush knuckles with his best friend. The same look would cross his face each time he remembered that Stiles was gone: realization, sadness, guilt, and bitterness all there, easy to read as any book.

Sometimes Derek still wakes up with Stiles’s voice in his head, an emphatic, “ _Trust me, man. I got this_.”

It makes Derek wish he  _hadn’t_ trusted him; it assures Derek of the dangers of trust, the inevitability that people will always let him down—even Stiles.

By the eighth month, they’ve moved on. Stiles is across country, they know, running with another pack of wolves. Derek knows Stiles checks in with his dad regularly because Scott tells him things: Stiles leased an apartment today; Stiles had a job interview today; Stiles ate frog legs today.

_Trust me, man. I got this. I’ve basically got mountain ash, like, oozing out of every orifice of my body._

_Nice mental picture to leave me with. Thanks for that._

_Anything for you, big guy. –_ a pregnant pause and a meaningful look passes between them –  _See you?_

_Yeah._

_When I get back, we should—you know. Do something._

_Yeah._

_Okay. Cool. –_ a grin here, easy and pleased, a little smug –  _Cool._

The first five months, Derek had overseen the full reconstruction of his family’s home. Now, three months later, he spends most of his time running and training the pack, and no one talks about the absence of Stiles anymore. It’s easier that way, to act like he never existed. Lydia calls it their own breed of masochism: the wound can’t heal until they discuss what happened, after all.

And no one wants this wound to heal; they all want to carry it on their hearts, knowing it was their fault that Stiles went off to ask for help from a foreign pack, that he went as the only human because he’s stupid and brave and strong like that, and they had all trusted him. All of them had trusted, so implicitly, that Stiles would follow through.

And he had. Three weeks later he’d sent the information they’d needed from the other pack, along with eight words, addressed to Derek:

_Sorry we couldn’t do that thing after all._

The smell of  _werewolf_ was all Derek had needed to know what had happened, what Stiles had given for the information, for  _Derek_.

No one’s tried to contact him since, because no one wants to risk offending Stiles’s new pack. That’s what they tell themselves, anyway. It’s what Derek tells himself every time he remembers the weight of his cell phone in his pocket, Stiles’s number the only favorited number because he was always the fastest way to get to Scott.

(Derek tries to ignore the voice in his head that asks  _If that’s the only reason, then why is he still favorited, Derek? Why is he even in your phone still, Derek? What sick hope are you still clinging to, Derek?_ )

It’s nearly the new year. Almost nine months since Stiles left. Derek’s dreams aren’t just  _Trust me, man_ anymore; now they’re huge, brown eyes looking up at him, cheeks flushed pink in both cold and indignation, a promise that they would “you know, do something” someday left unsatisfied in Derek’s chest. He wrenches himself out of the dreams when they become too much.

Sometimes dream-Stiles licks his lips and his breath shakes a little as he leans forward, his eyes on Derek’s mouth the way Derek’s eyes are on _his_  mouth (red and wet, lips just slightly chapped under the fresh sheen of spit); other times, dream-Stiles’s eyes flash bright, unnaturally gold, and that’s all it takes.

Either way, Derek wakes feeling guilty and hollow. His eyes always go to his bedside table, where his cell phone charges through the night. He wonders, in the darkness of his room, if Stiles has changed his number, if he’s fully renounced the last pieces of his old life—the life that had included Derek.

It’s the first day of the new year when Derek smells him again for the first time in, now, nine months, and he knows it’s not a dream because Stiles never smelled like  _werewolf_  in his dreams, but he does now. Stiles is quick in ways he never was as a human, and he’s already lounging, ironically catlike, on the front steps of the renewed Hale house when Derek wakes up, gasping for breath, terrified that he’s finally gone crazy for want of Stiles—crazy enough to imagine the smell of him even when he’s not dreaming.

But he’s not crazy because Stiles _is_ here.

His eyes are warm and dark, and he has an easy smile on his face, like he’s the exact same person who walked away from Derek nine months ago, off on an impossible mission and  _knowing_  that his humanity would be the thing to protect him.

“You’re late,” Derek says, and Stiles rolls his eyes.

“So, I got a little carried away with the whole Wolfman thing,” he grumbles. “Sue me.”

“That’s probably the last thing I’m going to do to you,” Derek says firmly, and Stiles laughs, looks like he’s brushing over the implications of that statement even though Derek can  _hear_ his heart stutter and skip, his scent spike in acknowledgement of the unspoken promise.

They’re quiet for a long time; the air is sharp and cold, and Derek can already hear Scott running—loud and clumsy even after all of these years—because it’s no surprise that, even after nine months, Scott has been waiting to smell Stiles the same way Derek has been.

“I’m back for good, you know,” Stiles says, his eyes downcast. “ I had to stick around until the end of the year, they said. Get a feel for what it’s like, being a werewolf and all. Then they’d let me make my choice—decide if I wanted to stay or not. Accept them as my pack or whatever.”

Derek’s quiet forever, not sure what to say to that.

“I told them I couldn’t, though,” Stiles continues, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking up at Derek expectantly, his eyes burning gold from beneath his dark eyelashes. “Told them I had a thing.”

**Author's Note:**

> and that's all she wrote, folks. come check me out on tumblr ([breenwolf.tumblr.com](http://breenwolf.tumblr.com)). i do mini-fics like this (that will probably never see the light of day on any archive) a couple times a day, and i'm always taking fic prompts. come say hi!


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